Can You Say “Charticulator”?… I K N E W YO U C O U L D

PA U L T U R L E YP r i n c i p a l C o n s u l t a n t , P r a g m a t i c Wo r k sM i c r o s o f t D a t a P l a t f o r m M V P

D e m o & s a m p l e f i l e s :

T i n y u r l . C o m / c h a r t i c u l a t o r - d e m o s

D o w n l o a d a n d e x t r a c t :D o w n l o a d T h i s F i l e . Z i p

Paul Turley

Principal Consultant, Pragmatic Works

pturley@pragmaticworks.com

linkedin.com/in/pturley

SqlServerBi.blog

@Paul_Turley

2

Power BI Visuals

Standard Visuals

Mainstream, “out of the box” charts & visuals

Easy to design & use

Supported

Not always flexible

Custom Visuals

Highly-customizable

Very flexible

Programming expertise:C#, JavaScript libraries

Long & complex development cycle

Charticulator

No code

Web-based designer

Flexible drag-and-drop tool

Detail properties

Compiles & exports to custom visuals

Charticulator is:

• A Microsoft Research Project

• Open source

• The goodness of custom visuals without all the work

• Built on durable technologies & API architecture

• Wicked-cool Visuals

Made by really smart people at Microsoft Research

…using really advanced web development libraries that are integrated Power BI components

Basic Chart Types

• Radial charts

• Linear charts

• Segmented series

• Continuous series

• Banding & links

• Relationships & transitions

• Bubbles

• Infographics

• Multiples

Charticulator Concepts• Glyph

• Mark

• Shape

• Text

• Image

• Data Axis

• Links

• Guides

• Plot segment

• Scaffold

• Legends, titles, misc Nearly all properties & attributes may be bound to a field or expression

Design Process

1. Generate/provide sample dataset

2. Create glyph with marks, text & shapes

3. Create plot segment

4. Define axes

5. Set field bindings & properties

6. Save chart (optionally download)

7. Export custom visual, set data mapping slots

8. Import custom visual, set fields & properties

Something Simple

Two Measure Bar Chart

• Data Axis

• Glyph contains rectangle marks

• Width bound to field values

• Text marks bound to field values

• Static text marks

• Marks aligned to guides

Let’s Do It!B UIL D T HE T WO ME A SURE B A R CHA R T

Building on the same theme as the two measure bar chart, a variety of bar chart and bullet graph visualizations are possible

And Now for Something Completely Different

Chart Components

Glyph with one rectangle mark

Rectangle height bound to Qty Sum field

Rectangle color bound to Category Name field

Link on Category Name using Bezier curve

X-axis on Month

Radial scaffold

Let’s Do It Again!UNT IL WE R UN O UT O F T IME

Resources

• Charticulator galleryhttps://charticulator.com/gallery

• YouTube demos published by Bongshin Leehttps://youtu.be/5EZq4QolNy4

• Demo by Leila Etaatihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC0L3Q373lw

• Research paper from development teamDonghao Ren, Bongshin Lee, and Matthew Brehmerhttps://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/08/Charticulator-InfoVis2018.pdf

• Materials for this sessionhttp://tinyurl.com/Charticulator-Demos

Thank You

pturley@pragmaticworks.com

linkedin.com/in/pturley

SqlServerBi.blog

@Paul_Turley

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